“No one chooses to be a geek”

There was no such thing as ‘geek chic’ in my day. There were no fashion spreads featuring models in tweed jackets and glasses. Now hipsters buy specs with clear glass in them as fashion accessories, made by Tom Ford or Yves Saint Laurent.

Stephen Merchant (and others) on the awkward years of adolescence. If you’ve heard Merchant on the Ricky Gervais podcasts (or the earlier XFM radio shows) then some of his anecdotes about life as a ‘teenage geek’ will be familiar to you. As they also might if you’ve ever made the mistake of pretending to be something you’re not.

Hand-coded in HTML5 and CSS3 on an Apple Macintosh using Sublime Text 2. Type set in Franklin Gothic and served by Typekit. Colophon embellishment (‘Manticore’) from The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents and Insects (1607) by Edward Topsell. Icons by IcoMoon.